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On the eve of war, I called the US embassy to ask for an interview with the American ambassador. The embassy's press attaché cautioned that "he gets a lot of requests" and was unlikely to talk to me "at this immediate time", but he would see what he could do and call me back. I didn't really expect another call - and so far none has come - because the current US ambassador is one of the most reticent in the 250-year history of the post. It's probably easier to get an interview with Saddam Hussein than with William Farish.

This ambassador is not a household name - not even perhaps in the large household in Regent's Park that comes with the job. "William who?" asked a London-based US press man when I asked him whether he had met Farish. "I don't know the name - and I'm someone who, if you put a map in front of me, could name 75% of the countries in the world." (This may have been a self-deprecating joke.)

William Stamps Farish III belies his grand moniker: he is a gentle, detached, patrician figure, a millionaire friend of the Bushes and the Queen who is more interested in horses than international diplomacy. He came for what he called a "working sabbatical" and now finds himself caught up in the rolling war on terror and an unpopular invasion of Iraq.

"It's bizarre to have an ambassador who is so anonymous," says a senior member of the US press corps in London, "especially at a time when presentation is so important to the US, and when we don't seem to be getting the presentation right. The president only seems to speak to our own little world and it would be helpful to have someone who speaks to the big brave world outside."

The problem arises from the peculiar status of the US ambassador. The days when rising political stars got the job - five holders of the post went on to be president, four vice-president and 10 secretary of state - have long gone. It is now usually a reward for services rendered - a plum posting for a good friend and a big donor.

Farish, who is 64, has known George W Bush all his life. Like Bush, he is a scion of a Texan oil family - his grandfather, William Stamps Farish, founded Humble Oil in 1900 and four-year-old Bill inherited an estimated $200m. When Bush announced his decision to run for president, Farish gave $100,000 to his fighting fund. The ambassadorship was the reward.

It is not the fact that one of Bush's buddies from Texas has the post that rankles most with Farish's US critics, but that he is happier with ponies than politics. "It can be useful to have an ambassador who is an old friend and has the ear of the president," says one US correspondent. "Pamela Harriman, Clinton's ambassador in Paris, was perfect. But who knows what Farish is doing? He's just not out there."Stephen Moss

The stock marketBack to the futures

If only Nick Leeson had though of it. A 44-year-old man called Andrew Carlssin, currently in the hands of an FBI team investigating allegations of insider trading, is offering a unique excuse as part of his plea bargain. Carlssin claims he is a time traveller from the year 2256 who, after making profits of $350m in just two weeks from an initial investment of $800, let greed get the better of him and attracted the attention of Wall Street's security and exchange commission. A case of Back to the Futures Market, if you will.

But the SEC isn't laughing: "We don't believe this guy's story. He's either a lunatic or a pathological liar," said a spokesman. "Every trade he made capitalised on unexpected business developments, which simply can't be pure luck. The only way he could pull it off is with illegal inside information. He's going to sit in a jail cell on Rikers Island until he agrees to give up his sources."

Carlssin's downfall, it seems, is that he didn't follow the basic rule of time travel: namely, never draw attention to yourself by exploiting your omniscience. What Doctor Who or Marty McFly would make of this amateur isn't clear, but even a non-time traveller could have told him that profiting from 126 consecutive high-risk trades over two weeks was sure to get him noticed.

He also forgot another cardinal rule: never get parted from your time machine when on a day trip to the past. Part of his plea bargain, it has been revealed, is that he is offering to tell the authorities the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and a cure for Aids if they just let him return to, as he calls it, his "time craft".

But at least he is now showing signs of repentance. "It was just too tempting to resist," Carlssin (on whom the FBI can't find any records dated before December 2002) allegedly said in his confession. "I had planned to make it look natural - you know, lose a little here and there so it didn't look too perfect. But I just got caught in the moment." He is refusing to budge on one fact, though - the location of his time machine. He fears the technology could "fall into the wrong hands".

However, one question must linger in the minds of the FBI: if he can predict the future, why didn't he foresee his arrest? (NB: For those of you knowingly pointing at the date on the top right-hand corner of this page, you are mistaken. This is a bona-fide story found on the internet, where, as we all know, truth is revered as a sanctity.)Leo Hickman

The animal kingdom Give a dog a bad name . . .

Every dog is allowed one bite; but is it allowed one nip? Or a couple of tucks? Scandal is rocking the dog world as news of canine facelifts emerges. Danny, a fluffy-haired, caramel-white coloured Pekinese more properly known as Dangerous Liaisons, beat 22,000 other canine contenders to win best in show at Crufts this year - only for a anonymous tip-off to be sent to the Kennel Club. Danny, it claimed, had had cosmetic surgery. If the allegation proves true, Danny will be stripped of his title.

One might imagine it would have been a difficult operation for the plastic surgeon - sorry, plastic vet. And how exactly does one improve the facial appearance of a Pekinese in any case? Surely the whole point of a Peke is that its face is pushed in and wrinkly?

Surprisingly, this is not a first for the dog world. "Lots of show dogs have artificial testicle implants," says Dr Deborah Wells, of Queens University, Belfast, psychologist of animals and their owners. "If a show dog loses a testicle for any reason, many owners want its symmetry restored." Besides which, a neutered dog cannot be shown in the ring.

"Owners of dogs for the show ring do have a quite different psychology and motivation from those of us who just want a pet. A show dog enhances their status in some way, like a covetable posh car. A winning dog brings lots of kudos and coverage in magazines, to say nothing of a big, shiny cup. I have many dogs brought to me with stage fright from inbreeding: they are too nervous to go into the show ring. The obvious answer is not to show the dog, then it won't be frightened; but of course that is not what the dedicated showing owner wants to hear." And for such people, shape certainly does matter - witness the bitter opposition of some breeders when tail-docking was forbidden some years ago.

Kennel Club rules are strict. "We must be informed of any surgical operation that changes the natural conformation of the animal," says spokewoman Sarah Ward. As for facelifts for Pekes, "That doesn't happen; and it hasn't happened this time. What did happen was that after Crufts, we got an anonymous tip-off and we thought, 'Uh-oh.' So we investigated, and found that Danny had had a severe throat infection, and an operation to explore it.

"The vet and the owners have now written with full details. No vet operates purely for cosmetic reasons. And if they do, they stay a million miles from us." Julian Champkin

Pastimes Intelligent? That's debatable

Of all the ways to wind down after work, there are more instantly gratifying options than attending a public debate. But this Thursday, hundreds will turn up at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, west London, to hear, among others, Brian Sewell and David Lee debate the motion: "Real artists work in advertising, not in the fine arts". Last week the hall was packed to capacity for the much deadlier motion: "Globalisation puts corporate profits before people", as debated by a panel including writers Georges Monbiot and Will Hutton and MEP Caroline Lucas. More incredibly, each audience member had coughed up £20 to get in.

The high turnout for the Intelligence Squared series of debates is too isolated to draw any serious conclusions about public taste from. What it does - barely - confirm is that holding an informed opinion about politics is sexy again, even without the lure of an event with the word "intelligence" in its title. For this reason, the Royal Geographical Society is not a spooky old chamber miles from the nearest tube station, but a deeply glamorous venue, university-like, where the explorers of the past presented their findings and visitors are made to feel virtuous. For less elevated reasons, public gatherings of any kind offer the thrilling certainty of cranks in the audience (my personal favourite: a man in the crowd at a Jonathan Franzen reading who asked, "I'm halfway through your book, Mr Franzen. Could you tell me how it ends?").

After each of the six panel members had made their opening speech, the debate was thrown to the floor. The audience divided into elaborately dressed Kensington locals on a social night out, economists, health workers, a policy analyst, a charity worker from Action Aid, Monbiot groupies, a band of PhD students who cackled derisively whenever the posh people spoke, and - here it came - a woman who stood up and asked what the panel thought about the fact that in North Korea, dogs are apparently cut up and made into medicine to cure "erectile dysfunction".

John Gordon, one of the organisers, puts the popularity of Intelligence Squared partly down to the fact that "the TV coverage of Iraq is so appalling that people enjoy listening to a well-structured argument, which lets them make up their own mind. At its best, it's intellectual Wimbledon." Still, before we get too encouraged, on the way out of the chamber, the most common first line of exchange between audience members was, "Did you hear the dog lady? Hilarious." Emma Brockes